VERSION

SYNOPSIS

DESCRIPTION

Dist::Zilla makes developing modules much easier by generating all kinds of boilerplate files, saving authors from having to write them by hand, but in some cases this can make developing more inconvenient. The most prominent example of this is with Makefile.PL files - although the majority of distributions can be hacked on just by editing the files in a source control checkout and using prove for testing, for some this isn't sufficient. In particular, distributions which use an auto-generated test suite and distributions which use XS both need special handling at build time before they will function, and with Dist::Zilla, this means running dzil build and rebuilding after every change. This is tedious!

This module provides an alternative. Create a minimal Makefile.PL in source control which handles just enough functionality for basic development (it can be as minimal as just what is in the "SYNOPSIS", but can also contain commands to generate your test suite, for example), and tell Dist::Zilla to replace it with a real Makefile.PL when you're actually ready to build a real distribution. To do this, make sure you're still using the MakeMaker plugin, either directly or through a pluginbundle like @Basic, and add the exclude_filename = Makefile.PL option to your dist.ini where you use [GatherDir].

In addition, this module also intercepts the install and dist rules in the generated Makefile to run the appropriate Dist::Zilla commands (dzil install and dzil build). This allows users to continue to use the perl Makefile.PL && make && make install set of commands, and have the correct thing continue to happen.

Note that if you're using this module to ease testing of an XS distribution, you'll need to account for your module not containing a $VERSION statement (assuming you're using the PkgVersion plugin). To do this, you should use an XSLoader invocation similar to this: